1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to engineering and management systems for the design of communications networks (both wireless and wired) and, more particularly, to a system and method for managing a real time bill of materials when designing, evaluating or optimizing the performance and/or costs of a communication system using a three-dimensional (3-D) representation of the environment. The present invention provides the design engineer with the ability to (1) group components together as a single connected or unconnected unit or xe2x80x9ccomponent kitxe2x80x9d to simplify selection and assembly of hardware components, (2) have at his or her disposal in the Parts List Library performance parameters for selected components which are associated with the signal or xe2x80x9cfrequencyxe2x80x9d which will pass through the component such that electromechanical properties of the components can be considered on a frequency dependent basis automatically by the system, and (3) have at his or her disposal attributes which are associated with specific components in the Parts List Library which, acting in concert with real-time smart processing, provide the design engineer with notifications or warnings when he or she has proposed connections, components, or other arrangements which will not operate correctly in the communications network.
2. Background Description
As wireless communications use increases, radio frequency (RF) coverage within buildings and signal penetration into buildings from outside transmitting sources has quickly become an important design issue for wireless engineers who must design and deploy cellular telephone systems, paging systems, or new wireless systems and technologies such as personal communication networks or wireless local area networks. Designers are frequently requested to determine if a radio transceiver location, or base station cell site can provide reliable service throughout an entire city, an office, building, arena or campus. A common problem for wireless systems is inadequate coverage, or a xe2x80x9cdead zone,xe2x80x9d in a specific location, such as a conference room. It is now understood that an indoor wireless PBX (private branch exchange) system or wireless local area network (WLAN) can be rendered useless by interference from nearby, similar systems. The costs of in-building and microcell devices which provide wireless coverage within a 2 kilometer radius are diminishing, and the workload for RF engineers and technicians to install these on-premises systems is increasing sharply. Rapid engineering design and deployment methods for microcell and in-building wireless systems are vital for cost-efficient build-out.
Analyzing radio signal coverage penetration and interference is of critical importance for a number of reasons. A design engineer must determine if an existing outdoor large scale wireless system, or macrocell, will provide sufficient coverage throughout a building, or group of buildings (i.e., a campus). Alternatively, wireless engineers must determine whether local area coverage will be adequately supplemented by other existing macrocells, or whether indoor wireless transceivers, or picocells, must be added. The placement of these cells is critical from both a cost and performance standpoint. If an indoor wireless system is being planned that interferes with signals from an outdoor macrocell, the design engineer must predict how much interference can be expected and where it will manifest itself within the building, or group of buildings. Also, providing a wireless system that minimizes equipment infrastructure cost as well as installation cost is of significant economic importance. As in-building and microcell wireless systems proliferate, these issues must be resolved quickly, easily, and inexpensively, in a systematic and repeatable manner.
There are many computer aided design (CAD) products on the market that can be used to design the environment used in one""s place of business or campus. WiSE from Lucent Technology, Inc., SignalPro from EDX, PLAnet by Mobile Systems International, Inc., and TEMS and TEMS Light from Ericsson are examples of wireless CAD products. In practice, however, a pre-existing building or campus is designed only on paper and a database of parameters defining the environment does not readily exist. It has been difficult, if not generally impossible, to gather this disparate information and manipulate the data for the purposes of planning and implementation of indoor and outdoor RF wireless communication systems, and each new environment requires tedious manual data formatting in order to run with computer generated wireless prediction models. Recent research efforts by ATandT Laboratories, Brooklyn Polytechnic, and Virginia Tech, are described in papers and technical reports entitled xe2x80x9cRadio Propagation Measurements and Prediction Using Three-dimensional Ray Tracing in Urban Environments at 908 MHZ and 1.9 GHz,xe2x80x9d (IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, VOL. 48, No. 3, May 1999), by S. Kim, B. J. Guarino, Jr., T. M. Willis III, V. Erceg, S. J. Fortune, R. A. Valenzuela, L. W. Thomas, J. Ling, and J. D. Moore, (hereinafter xe2x80x9cRadio Propagationxe2x80x9d); xe2x80x9cAchievable Accuracy of Site-Specific Path-Loss Predictions in Residential Environments,xe2x80x9d (IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, VOL. 48, No. 3, May 1999), by L. Piazzi and H. L. Bertoni; xe2x80x9cMeasurements and Models for Radio Path Loss and Penetration Loss In and Around Homes and Trees at 5.85 Ghz,xe2x80x9d (IEEE Transactions on Communications, Vol. 46, No. 11, November 1998), by G. Durgin, T. S. Rappaport, and H. Xu; xe2x80x9cRadio Propagation Prediction Techniques and Computer-Aided Channel Modeling for Embedded Wireless Microsystems,xe2x80x9d ARPA Annual Report, MPRG Technical Report MPRG-TR-94-12, July 1994, 14 pp., Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, by T. S. Rappaport, M. P. Koushik, J. C. Liberti, C. Pendyala, and T. P. Subramanian; xe2x80x9cRadio Propagation Prediction Techniques and Computer-Aided Channel Modeling for Embedded Wireless Microsystems,xe2x80x9d MPRG Technical Report MPRG-TR-95-08, July 1995, 13 pp., Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, by T. S. Rappaport, M. P. Koushik, C. Carter, and M. Ahmed; xe2x80x9cUse of Topographic Maps with Building Information to Determine Antenna Placements and GPS Satellite Coverage for Radio Detection and Tracking in Urban Environments,xe2x80x9d MPRG Technical Report MPRG-TR-95-14, Sep. 15, 1995, 27 pp., Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, by T. S. Rappaport, M. P. Koushik, M. Ahmed, C. Carter, B. Newhall, and N. Zhang; xe2x80x9cUse of Topographic Maps with Building Information to Determine Antenna Placement for Radio Detection and Tracking in Urban Environments,xe2x80x9d MPRG Technical Report MPRG-TR-95-19, November 1995, 184 pp., Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, by M. Ahmed, K. Blankenship, C. Carter, P. Koushik, W. Newhall, R. Skidmore, N. Zhang and T. S. Rappaport; xe2x80x9cA Comprehensive In-Building and Microcellular Wireless Communications System Design Tool,xe2x80x9d MPRG-TR-97-13, June 1997, 122 pp., Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, by R. R. Skidmore and T. S. Rappaport; xe2x80x9cPredicted Path Loss for Rosslyn, Va.,xe2x80x9d MPRG-TR-94-20, Dec. 9, 1994, 19 pp., Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, by S. Sandhu, P. Koushik, and T. S. Rappaport; xe2x80x9cPredicted Path Loss for Rosslyn, Va., Second set of predictions for ORD Project on Site Specific Propagation Predictionxe2x80x9d MPRG-TR-95-03, Mar. 5, 1995, 51 pp., Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, by S. Sandhu, P. Koushik, and T. S. Rappaport. These papers and technical reports are illustrative of the state of the art in site-specific propagation modeling and show the difficulty in obtaining databases for city environments, such as Rosslyn, Va. While the above papers describe a research comparison of measured vs. predicted signal coverage, the works do not demonstrate a systematic, repeatable and fast methodology for creating an environmental database, nor do they report a method for analyzing system performance or visualizing and placing various wireless equipment components that are required to provide signals in the deployment of a wireless system in that environment.
While there are many methods available for designing wireless networks that provide adequate coverage, there is no easy method to ensure that the system will be cost effective. For instance, even though the coverage may be more than adequate, given the chosen wireless infrastructure components, the total cost of the system could be prohibitive.
It is an object of the invention to provide a rapid and automated method for generating a bill of materials and cost information in real time, as components for a desired wireless communication system are specified and/or replaced by substitute components, while continuously predicting wireless system performance. This automatic method for comparing the cost and performance of competing products or competing design methodologies, in real time, offers a significant value for wireless engineers and provides a marked improvement over present day techniques.
It is another object of this invention to provide a communications design engineer with a software tools which allow him or her to (1) group components together as a single unit or xe2x80x9ccomponent kitxe2x80x9d to simplify selection and assembly of hardware components, (2) have at his or her disposal in the Parts List Library performance parameters for selected components which are associated with the signal or xe2x80x9cfrequencyxe2x80x9d which will pass through the component such that electromechanical properties of the components can be considered on a frequency dependent basis either automatically or through the use of a prompt (i.e., these being xe2x80x9cfrequency dependent characteristicsxe2x80x9d), and (3) have at his or her disposal attributes which are associated with specific components in the Parts List Library which, acting in concert with real-time smart processing, provide the design engineer with notifications or warnings when he or she has proposed connections, components, or other arrangements which will not operate correctly in the communications network.
According to the invention, a design engineer builds a model of the desired wireless communications system and specifies each component necessary to provide sufficient or optimal system performance. A parts list is maintained, in real time, that contains a definition of each system component and its associated performance and cost parameters. Using this method, the user is able to rapidly change the physical location of components within the wireless system in order to investigate alternative designs which may use different components, such as antennas and cables; or use different RF distribution methods and/or various types of coaxial or optical splitter systems, etc. Cost parameters include both component costs and installation costs. As the system is changed through a series of xe2x80x9cwhat-ifxe2x80x9d scenarios, components are replaced with substitute components, cable lengths are modified, antenna systems and base stations are re-positioned to alternate locations, etc.
Each time a component is added to or deleted from the system model, the bill of materials is automatically updated and component costs, total costs, and altered system performance specifications are immediately available to the design engineer. The designer may choose to swap components for less expensive components. The performance characteristics of the system are automatically updated as cost choices are made to enable the designer to assess the changes in performance and cost at the same time.
The communications design engineer may group several components together into a collection referred to as a xe2x80x9ccomponent kitxe2x80x9d. Thereafter, he or she will need only select the xe2x80x9ccomponent kitxe2x80x9d for inclusion in the computerized representation of the physical environment in which the communications network will be installed. These xe2x80x9ccomponent kitsxe2x80x9d could be custom designed by the design engineer or, alternatively, the software package included in this system could have preselected components bundled as a xe2x80x9ccomponent kitxe2x80x9d. The xe2x80x9ccomponent kitsxe2x80x9d allow the design engineer to more simply and quickly prepare models of the communications network since he or she will be able to select essentially bundles of communications components at a time. The system; however, will be able to track all the attributes of all the components in the selected component kits, including all performance attributes, pricing information, and other physical attributes and maintenance schedules, such that calculations will automatically consider the performance criteria, pricing and compatibility for the system designed by the engineer. The component kits may be assembled in the same manner as an actual communication system, including the associated cabling and distribution system, so that connections between components are already set up when the kit is added into a system; this saves a great deal of time for the engineer.
Various attributes of components will be associated with specific components in the Parts List Library, such as, for example, whether a component is an optical component or one which requires radio signals. As another example, the length of cable in which a signal can propagate without unacceptable deterioration may be associated with the cable in the parts list library. These attributes will be considered automatically by the system of this invention such that when a design engineer attempts to model connected components which are not properly connectable in the physical world, or when he or she attempts to use too long a cable length, etc., the system will provide a warning that the system being designed will be inoperative or be otherwise flawed. This will allow the designer to immediately recognize errors in design and correct for them during the design phase. Without such a facility, errors may not be discovered until installation or use of the system, at which point they are far more costly to repair.
Frequency dependent characteristics will also be associated with individual components in the Parts List Library. This will allow the design engineer to automatically consider the effects of signal frequency on the electrical performance of the designed communications network. This feature is especially valuable in light of the fact that most of said components are specifically designed to function in multiple frequency bands, with varying performance with respect to frequency.